


Domesticity

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Domestic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 14:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1861305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Altair is sent to buy a bed for their son and fails to tell Malik and Maria exactly what oversized, ridiculous, impossible-to-put-together piece of furniture he actually bought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Domesticity

**Author's Note:**

> i don't even have an excuse for this. i wanted it. i wrote it.

The whole thing had been a fucking disaster from the first God damn minute. The problem wasn’t that Altair-the-Great wasn’t capable of making logical and sound decisions because he was perfectly able. The man had the ability to seek and find supremely impressive bargains. In a department store, Altair was like a force of nature. Cashiers were known to marvel at his skills or faint in fright of him. There was a row of framed receipts hanging on the wall in the laundry room that simply had to preserved for the awe-inspiring (and in general hard to believe) money saving prowess they displayed.

In short, Altair knew how to be frugal. 

That was not the problem. The problem was that the man was also an idiot with an untold depth of stupidity that was brought swiftly and mercilessly to the forefront by the adorable-little-face of their son. Darim used this knowledge to his advantage at seemingly random intervals so as to get the maximum results. 

Maria said it was-best-if-Darim went with his father to pick out his new-bed since the new-baby was going to be very-upsetting and helping to choose his own furniture would give Darim something to do that would make him feel empowered. Malik agreed because it meant that he wouldn’t have to go with a three year old and Altair-the-great-and-magnificent to a furniture store with in-house financing. 

He had managed to put two stipulations into the pot. It needed to be twin-sized (no larger or else Darim’s bedroom would not exist any longer) and it needed to be relatively simple so that it would fit both up the staircase leading to their apartment and through the many doors and the long-and-thin hallway they had to carry it through.

“Got it,” Altair said. ‘Got it’ like a promise that he understood the stipulations and the expectations and would soon return victorious. ‘Got it’ the man said.

\--

The bed was delivered on a Thursday because it was Malik-and-Maria’s day off and they had learned long-long ago over a set of rather easily constructed bookshelves that Altair should never be allowed near furniture that came in several pieces. The man had put a hole in the wall with a hammer and nobody could figure out how it had happened.

“What the hell has he done?” Maria demanded as soon as they reached the bottom of the steps and saw the pile of cardboard boxes the men were unloading for them. She put one hand on her rounded belly in the way someone else might have clutched at a string of pearls. “Did he tell you about this?” she asked.

Malik sighed. 

“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to get in the car, drive to his office and slit his stupid throat.” She turned around and went for the stairs and Malik looked after him somewhat helplessly as she went.

“Could you just knock on Ezio’s door and see if—”

“Shut up,” she shouted back. And then, “yes.”

Ezio lived one floor above theirs and he came down with his baby-cousin Desmond who might as well been Ezio’s clone for the startling resemblance between the two. The two of them had the air of having spent the morning holed up in front of the TV because their hands were curved in that very specific manner of having been holding a game controller for too long. “What has your crazy fucking boyfriend done now?” Ezio asked.

“Oh no, he is not my boyfriend right now. He’s Maria’s husband right now.” Malik was absolutely not going to take responsibility for this act of supreme idiocy.

“Shit,” Desmond said agreeably. 

The men who delivered the furniture offered to carry it up the staircase but Altair-had-this-thing about strange men and their apartment. He couldn’t stand having anyone there if he weren’t around (as if his very presence made strange men around his wife less of a threat). Malik declined graciously and was left with a stack of boxes. 

“Oh fuck,” Ezio groaned when they picked the first one up. “You owe me.” Desmond stayed at the bottom of the steps to keep an eye on the other boxes and Malik-and-Ezio were left with the joyous task of carrying the box up-and-up and around the bend in the staircase. (That had been a moment of precarious balance that nearly ended with the box flying over the side of the bannister.)

“Fuck,” Ezio said when his hand got shoved into the doorframe. “Shit,” Malik gasped when he knocked a lamp over and the shattered glass spread out under his feet and all across the square of linoleum at the front door just before the carpet that covered the rest of the living room. They set the box down and Ezio lounged out on the steps talking trash to Desmond about him being lazy while Malik cleaned up the mess. 

“Your boyfriend!” Maria shouted when she emerged from the kitchen. “He said that Darim really wanted this one. He said Darim really loved it. He said that it wasn’t that expensive and that it’s really neat looking. Your boyfriend!” Maria shouted and pointed at Malik.

“Your husband,” Malik said back.

“Oh no,” Maria countered, “he was yours first and that means when he does dumb shit like this he is one hundred percent yours.”

Malik scoffed at the very notion. “I think we decided that when he fucks up financial things that he’s _your husband_. When he fucks up on romantic holidays he’s my boyfriend. This one is on you.”

Maria narrowed her eyes at him with her hand curled over the prominent roundness of her stomach like she was considering a long line of comebacks. They were going through her eyes in a revolving door of ‘who is carrying your child, Malik? Who is going to give birth to your offspring? Who?’ but the words never came. Instead she said, “I’m going to get Darim from preschool. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Ezio followed Malik down to the bottom again and they stood there and waved at Maria until she was gone. Then Ezio said, “should I be expecting Altair to show up to sleep on my couch tonight?”

“That depends on whether or not this monstrosity is actually ‘really neat looking’ when it’s put together.” That was not the truth. It was not even close to the truth. The truth was that Altair had just placed himself firmly on the ‘shit list’ by buying something that had not been agreed upon beforehand and then proceeding to keep said thing a secret. 

\--

Ezio collapsed in a heap of sweaty limbs when they’d finished dragging the boxes up the stairs. Desmond stood with his elbow over the top of the box that said it had a mattress in it and wiped his face with his shirt. “How the hell are we going to get this shit into Darim’s bedroom?” 

Malik was damp with sweat and pink with irritation. There was no forgiveness anywhere in his body and therefore he had no ability to answer the question without shouting about idiot boyfriends and their stupid weakness for little boys with cute faces and pouty lips. 

“Please,” Ezio said to the expression on his face (if not to his thoughts themselves). “You act like it’s going to be so different when your baby is born. At least Altair is aware that he’s completely defenseless against his son.” 

“I’ve got to take Darim’s old bed out.” Then Malik went to do that before the boy got home and threw a fit about how he was being forced to give up the toddler bed that he’d broken with his endless bouncing. Malik carried it down to the dumpster and threw it in just in time to meet Darim on his way up the steps.

“Is my fort bed here? Daddy said it was coming today, is it here?” Darim did not wait for an answer but charge ever onward up the steps and shrieked in joy when he discovered the pile of boxes destined for his room. Maria slipped past him and went down the hall to his bedroom. She was picking up the things that had gotten under his bed and sitting on his little chair next to his tiny table. 

“We’re going to have to move his stuff if we’re getting those boxes in here.” 

They spent twenty minutes pushing everything Darim owned against the far wall in his bedroom. Maria vacuumed while Malik went out to fix Darim a sandwich and contemplated the boxes and their ungainly length. 

“Ready?” Ezio asked. Desmond was eating a sandwich and having an intelligent conversation about early-morning children’s TV with Darim. “Get me away from them.”

\--

First, the box was too long for them to get even the end of it in the doorway without knocking pictures off the wall and then attempting to redecorate by removing the wall entirely. Even with Ezio holding the opposite end over his head as far as he could manage they could not get the stupid thing into Darim’s room. 

Second, there was no doorway the stupid box would fit into that would allow them to maneuver it in such a way as to get it into the stupid room. 

Third, it was fucking ridiculously heavy. Malik and Ezio tore the box open and found out that it contained two long wood pieces that would _also not fit_. 

Fourth, Darim showed up in the middle with a helpful chatter about how excited he was that his ‘fort bed’ had arrived and would soon be put together.

“Are you going to do it Malik? Are you going to put it together? Can I watch you put it together? Daddy said he couldn’t put it together because he was too smart to do it. He’s so silly.”

Ezio was leaning against the wall with sweat dripping down his face and a blackening cloud of anger making him less-and-less attractive by the moment. Malik was standing in the corner of his hallway with a doorknob jammed into his hip while he tried to work out how to put the stupid fucking pieces of wood into the stupid bedroom. 

“Look, we have to get them into your bedroom door first and then go diagonally into Darim’s room. If you pick up your end and lift it straight up we can get my end into your room,” Ezio said. It sounded so reasonable when it was actually nothing but the same thing they’d tried three times to get the stupid things into Darim’s room and all three times they’d failed.

Fifth was the hole they put in the ceiling and the sprinkle of dry wall that dusted into Malik’s hair and nearly made his whole body light itself on fire out of protest of extreme stupidity. “ _Go get the genius engineer_ ,” Malik snapped.

“I thought you were going to put my bed together,” Darim said softly from behind the pile of broken box pieces. “Aren’t you going to do it, Malik? Daddy said that you were going to do it.”

“Darim,” Maria called from down the hall, “you need to come here, son. Malik’s frustrated.”

Darim went, with shuffling feet and hiccup-like cries.

\--

Leonardo was a bona-fide genius. He walked in on the problem, scratched his chin and looked at the shape-of-the-hallway and then at the length of the boards. Ezio understood the completely silent directions that Leonardo gave. Together they made quick work of getting the boards into the room like it-wasn’t-that-difficult. 

“Now the rest,” Malik said.

Leonardo did not carry the pieces but waited for them to get jammed into the hallway at awkward angles and then nudged them here-there and got them into the room without a single curse word. 

Once in the room, Leonardo perched himself on the pile of Darim’s things.

(“Why is my stuff all there? Did you move it, Malik? Did you move my stuff? Why did my stuff go there? I don’t like my stuff there. I want my stuff back where it was. Can we put my stuff back? I want my stuff back.”)

The man was looking at the instructions with the most perplexed look of comic horror on his face. “Who writes these instructions?” Leonardo demanded. “These make no sense. Can you understand these?”

Malik could read instructions. He didn’t respond other than a shrug and set about ripping open all the boxes and making sure they had all the pieces. “Where do we start?”

“I can’t figure it out,” Leonardo said. “I’m an actual engineer and this looks like gibberish to me. Who writes these?” He turned the paper sideways and tilted his head and then handed the paper to Malik. “I could probably put this thing together without instructions but I’m not sure I can put it together _with_ them.” 

“It can’t be that hard,” Malik said.

\--

As it turned out, it could be that difficult. Ezio had a bruise on his shin, a gash on the top of his foot and had blood blisters on two of his fingers. Malik’s elbow was skinned, his thigh was bruised from balancing the bulk of the weight from the monstrous set of stairs they had constructed out a series of smaller pieces. His right palm was skinned and then rubbed even rawer by having to screw in so many stupid screws using nothing but the provided hex key. 

“What the fuck is this thing?” Ezio said somewhere in the middle. He had taken his shirt off and abandoned it somewhere on the floor. 

“A bunkbed?” Desmond guessed. He was tightening the screws after Malik because he’d walked in when the frenzy of construction had dwindled into a lull of confusion. Ezio was holding three different metal pieces and Malik was sitting cross legged on the floor with a drawer face across his lap and the instructions spread out across it. “It looks like a bunk except like—are the steps drawers?”

“Apparently,” Malik mumbled. “What goes under it?”

They had closed the door about the time Ezio’s cheerful banter faded into Italian expletives. Maria was very interested in teaching their son as many languages as his brain could absorb but she did not find it as amusing as Altair did when Darim cursed at people in foreign languages. 

“Maybe nothing goes under it?” Ezio said. “We don’t have many pieces left, right? Maybe nothing goes under it.”

“Ok, we have to put the drawers together. I think we’re done after that.” Hopefully. If God had mercy.

\--

Darim broke back into the room as Malik was tightening the last screw on the first drawer. He squealed in delight at the bed standing in the center of his room and made an immediate mad-dash for the steps. “My bed!” He made it half up the steps when he fell and knocked his shin against the edge effectively skinning and bruising himself in the same act of clumsiness. He let out an unholy wail that startled Ezio into dropping the screwdriver he’d been using to put together the second drawer. 

“Darim,” Malik said, “come here.” He got back to his feet and picked the poor kid up when he hobbled over toward him. “It’s not done yet, you can’t climb on it until it’s finished.”

This logic was unimpressive so Malik carried Darim back out to Maria to be cuddled and soothed.

\--

“At last!” Ezio crowed. He slid the last drawer into place. The bed took up almost half of the room by itself. There were bookshelves built into the right side of it, stairs with drawers in them built into the left. Underneath there was a long panel that served as (he guessed) a desk and then a series of mesh pockets for stowing stuff. There was even a curtain rod that hung two camouflage curtains with mesh windows in them. 

“It really is a cool bed,” Desmond said. He was gathering up the tools. “I hope you never move because it’s sure as fuck not ever coming down, but it’s a nice bed.” 

“It appeals to my inner three year old,” Ezio said.

Malik took a step back and tried to truly appreciate the wonder and majesty that was the bed. He wanted to see it from Darim’s eyes but all he could think was how every part of his body seemed to be aching all at once and they had been putting a bed together for the past five hours and there was still even more work to do in order to fit all of the things that Darim had already had into his room into what little space was left. “I guess,” Malik said. “I’m going to get the mattress.”

\--

Malik put the sheet on the mattress before he shoved it over the guard rail into its place. He’d sent Ezio-and-Desmond out to the kitchen to gorge on the dinner that Maria had finished at some point during the painfully long hours of putting the bed together. When the bedroom door opened again, Altair slipped in through the narrow opening and stepped over the pile of Styrofoam and cardboard packaging that also needed to be taken care of. 

“Even you can’t say that it isn’t a cool bed,” Altair said. “Look at it. Every three year old in the world wants this bed.”

That was not exactly the reason that Malik was upset. He just shrugged. “Your three old, specifically would like to have his stuff put back in his room like it was. So why don’t you work on that while I take this trash out.”

Altair pouted but he had the intelligence not to do it obviously or in Malik’s direction.

It took four trips to get all of the trash out. Malik ate dinner by the counter in the kitchen. Maria was in the bathroom singing to Darim while he took a bath and Ezio-and-Desmond had gone home.

Darim’s doorway was open at the end of the hallway and the bright light illuminated the dim hall. Malik tried to stay angry about the whole fiasco (his whole wasted day, perhaps) but Darim was explaining all about how he’d chosen the bed because it was going to be the best fort ever and how the new baby would love to play there with him when it was bigger. He was a ball of pure energy and enthusiasm.

Malik huffed, rinsed his dishes and went down the hall to where Altair was quietly setting the room right. He had stacked all of Darim’s book on the shelves at the right of the bed and was stuffing his little action figures into the mesh pockets. The mess of art things were spread across the desk. His little table was back in its corner already which left his dresser and his big toy chest and a few other smaller things to move back to their rightful places. 

Altair-and-he worked quickly and quietly. 

Malik stood at the doorway and Altair put his arm across Malik’s shoulders. “I should have told you,” he said.

“Yes, you should have,” Malik said.

Darim wiggled his way between them, slipping easily through and racing over to climb up the steps hands-and-feet before he collapsed onto his mattress with a grateful thump. “It’s perfect,” he said. 

Malik conceded that point. It truly was perfect. He gave Darim a hug and told him good night and left him to torture his father with all of the many wonderful aspects of his brand new bed. Maria came to the doorway to watch the torture in action as she rubbed her hand over her belly in slow circles.

“You’re just as bad you know,” she said. 

Malik snorted. “I don’t know why people say that. I would not have gotten this bed just because Darim pouted at me. It was a waste of our time and money. It barely even fits in the room.”  
Maria was nodding along which means she didn’t believe a word of it. “Oh yes, of course. It’s a terrible waste. That is why our child is so brilliantly happy right now. A complete waste. And you’re still just as bad as Altair. I fear for the fate of our sons if the two of you were allowed to make all of the important choices.”

“Mommy!” Darim shouted. “Look at my pockets. Daddy put my men in the pockets.”

\--

Darim didn’t fall asleep until nine. Malik was tired by then, fresh from a shower and lounging on the couch in the living room watching nonsense TV. Maria had gone to lay down and Altair only just managed to escape their son’s room with his life. The sound of lullabies was a soft sort of wafting noise down the hall—loud over Altair’s tiptoeing footsteps. 

“That is the happiest kid in the world right now,” Altair said.

“Mm,” Malik said. “You are not allowed to buy the baby furniture. You have lost your privilege.”

Altair snorted. “I thought we just stuck Darim’s old crib in Ezio’s spare closet. Why do we need to buy anything? For that matter, Darim didn’t even sleep in his crib. He slept in that swing thing with the bugs on it.”

“I remember,” Malik said. “We don’t have a swing thing anymore. Unless you stuffed that in Ezio’s spare closet too.”

“I think I gave it to Leonardo for parts,” Altair said. He came over and nudged at Malik until there was room for him to sit and Malik could rest his head in his lap. “Come on, admit the bed is cool. You know you want to admit it.”

“You want me to, you mean,” Malik said. “That bed injured me several times. Look at my palm.” He held it up to show off the raw-meat redness of it and Altair hissed in polite sympathy. 

“I could kiss it better for you,” Altair said. His hand, by this point, had wiggled itself into Malik’s loose sleeping shirt and was slowly inching its way down toward his nipple. Along the way his fingertip scrawled letters like sweet-promises across his skin. “Do you want me to kiss it better for you?”

“Is Darim really asleep?” Malik asked.

“Yes.”

“Because Maria isn’t going to let us in the bedroom while she’s laying down. She said the baby’s been kicking her liver for an hour.” It was easy to lay there and let Altair work out his apologies in soft-sure touches all along his body. It was easy to luxuriate in the quiet of the apartment. “Also, she’s still kind of pissed at you, I think.”

“You’re not?” Altair said softly. He was slipping out from under Malik, falling on his bony knees on the floor next to the couch. He leaned in against Malik’s side with one elbow across his body and his chin against the back of his hand over Malik’s chest. 

“That remains to be seen.”

Altair grinned and it was the same sunny-ridiculous-brightness of his son’s face. “Do you want me to rub your back?” Half of the reason Maria married Altair had to do with his ability to reduce human beings to shapeless putty of utter joy with his hands. (At least that’s how she put it.) Even before Malik grunted his agreement to the prospect the man was urging him to roll over. 

\--

Malik woke up to disorienting darkness. Someone had thrown a blanket over him and it took him a dizzying matter of moments before he was able to work out that he was in the living room. And another five minutes before he found his phone on the table next to the arm of the couch and discovered it was two in the morning. 

He got up, threw the blanket back on the couch and stumbled down the hall to the big bedroom. The bathroom light was on and the brilliance of the light illuminated Maria curled around the long body pillow she used to keep them away from her when she got uncomfortable in her own body. Altair was not in bed with her which meant he’d either sought refuge in the comforting forgiveness of Ezio’s guest room or he was sleeping on an air mattress in the new baby’s empty nursery. Either way, Malik dug his pillows out from under the pile and climbed into bed. 

“Mm,” Maria mumbled at him. “Altair hiding?”

“Looks like.” Then he yawned and put one arm over his head (a habit that Altair hated more than entirely logical even if it meant the man got elbowed in the face in his sleep) and fell back asleep to the gentle rise and fall of Maria’s breath.

\--

It was morning again—six thirty—when the first alarm woke Malik up. He groaned his displeasure at having to move at all. Maria complained wordlessly about the sound and groped across his body to smack at it. Malik took pity on her and hit the button to shut it off before he rolled out of bed.

Altair was not in the nursery. Malik groaned and rubbed his face and the stubble that had grown thick on his cheeks since the last time he shaved before he blindly ran into Darim’s door and opened it enough to peek inside the murky-grayness of too early in the morning to be awake. The shapes of the room were out-of-order from the norm so he couldn’t find any aberration that might have been Altair’s body without actually going in the room.

Malik was looking on the floor for the idiot but Darim popped up over the guardrail of his bed and said in a comically quiet voice, “Daddy’s sleeping up here.” When Malik straightened up and looked through the slats in the guard rail, there was Altair coiled up in a way that allowed Darim a comfortable pocket of space to sleep in. He wasn’t snoring but still dead asleep with his face pillowed on a scrunched up carrot plushie. “He said you took his spot,” Darim said.

“Well you know your Dad can’t sleep in the same place twice in a row.” This had been true as long as Malik had known the man. Altair simply could not sleep in the same place for very long before the urge to sleep in ridiculous places overcame him. Malik had spent years raging at the idiocy of it but Maria had simply bought him an air mattress and electronic air pump and gave the idiot her blessing. “Go back to sleep, it’s early.”

Malik went up the stairs and tickled the bottom of Altair’s feet (one of the only sure ways to wake him up) and managed to duck out of the way of getting kicked in the face. “Your alarm went off, get up,” he said when Altair was sitting up enough to look at him with that surly early-morning growl.

\--

Altair returned from his morning run coated in sweat and shirtless. “Five,” he said when he stole an apple from the bowl on the table in the kitchen. “Mostly ladies. Although there was this one guy who was watering his own shoes the first time I went past and then was sitting on his porch doing nothing when I went past the second time.”

“Hardly a record,” Malik said. He was dressed-for-work, working on his second cup of blessed coffee while he worked on the crossword in the newspaper. “You’re losing your touch,” Malik said.

“You should come with me next time. I bet we could double the number.” He was drinking water at the sink by cupping his hand under the running faucet and sucking it off his palm before he gave up the pretense and just ducked his whole head under the water. “Does Darim need anything special for preschool today?”

“Show-n-Tell,” Malik said. “The letter of the week is Q so have fun with that.” 

Altair leaned back against the sink with an ugly sneer. “What the hell even starts with Q? Quiche? Quiet? Quilt?”

“Quran,” Malik offered because he was only half listening.

“Quintet? Quince. Quench.” He kept listing them even as Malik got up to leave. His tall-thin-sweat-soaked body was directly in the way of the sink and the grin that snuck up on the sides of his mouth did not even attempt to apologize for the obstacle he created. The bastard tipped Malik’s head up with just two of his fingers against the bottom of his chin. “You fell asleep on me last night.”

“Who’s fault is that?” He kissed Altair while managing not to touch him anywhere else that might transfer his gross sweat to Malik’s work clothes. Then he moved away from him. “Maria needs to be up by eight thirty, don’t forget. Try not to let Darim wear his pajamas to school again.”

“Love you,” Altair said.

“Love you too.” Malik called back as he went down the hall to kiss Maria good-bye before he left. She barely woke up enough to know it was him, mumbled something about having a good day before she was asleep again.

\--

Nine hours later, Malik walked in Darim dancing on the coffee table in the living room with paint covering half his body while wearing a tutu and singing along to the song about monkeys falling off a bed. His hair was sticking out from either side of his head with streaks of the same paint that covered his chest threaded through. 

It did not even qualify as the single most ridiculous thing that Malik had ever walked in to find after the boy was left in Altair’s unsupervised care. It was however, made even more ridiculous when Altair walked back into the room. He was barefoot, wearing one of Maria’s pleated skirts, bare chested with an assortment of fingerpaint staining his skin. His own lighter hair was in tiny-fist shaped clumps painted a brilliant shade of fire-engine red. 

“Malik!” Darim shouted when he saw him. “Do you want a makeover?” His volume seemed to be stuck at eleven. He motioned at Altair like an artist revealing his finest achievement. “Look at Daddy. He looks better now. Doesn’t he look better now?”

There was simply no denying that Altair looked better now. “Let me put my stuff up and change my clothes, Darim.” Of course Darim followed him to the room, sorted through his dresser for something he deemed worthy of wearing and dragged Malik (wearing his swim trunks) back out to the kitchen to be painted.

\--

Maria came home last. Darim was standing on a chair in front of the TV holding a paper towel roll like scepter while he officiated a wedding between Altair (the bride) and Malik (not a prince). They had been standing there holding hands for the better part of five minutes and Malik’s ability to hold in sarcastic comebacks had reached its limit.

The door closing drew Darim’s attention and he giggled.

For a moment, there was an air of uncertainty about whether or not Maria would find their ridiculous display endearing or if she was going to start shouting about how the paint was going to take forever to scrub out of the carpet (because it was melting off Altair now. His body produced an unreal amount of heat). 

“Clearly, it’s my turn for a makeover,” Maria said. 

An hour later they were sitting around the kitchen table on trash bags (to spare the wood chairs from the paint stains) eating an assortment of leftovers for dinner. Maria was wearing a bikini top and a pair of track pants. Her skin was mottled with a mix of pink-blue-purple that made her fair skin look bruised. Her hair had been twisted up into a heap at the top of her head before Darim streaked it with yellow paint and declared her the most beautiful of all princesses. 

“You are so lucky I love you,” she said to the three of them.


End file.
